This invention relates generally to radiation systems, and more particularly, to radiation systems having treatment and imaging capabilities.
Radiation therapy involves medical procedures that selectively expose a region of a patient, such as a cancerous tumor, to doses of radiation. The purpose of the radiation therapy is to irradiate the targeted region (e.g., the targeted biological tissue) till the undesirable tissue is destroyed. Radiation has also been used to obtain images of tissues for facilitating planning or subsequent treatment.
During a radiation planning session, radiation treatment planning is performed before treatment radiation is delivered to a patient. This allows an accurate and precise dosage of radiation to be delivered to the patient. During the planning session, configuration data, such as location, size, and shape of a targeted region, may be acquired from an imaging procedure, performed (for example) using a computed tomography (CT) imaging system. Existing CT imaging systems typically take image slices of a patient in which the image slices are vertical (or perpendicular) to a longitudinal axis of the patient or the patient support.
After the radiation treatment plan is determined, the patient then undergoes a radiation treatment procedure. During the radiation treatment procedure, a radiation treatment system is used to deliver a desired radiation dosage to the targeted region of the patient according to the determined radiation treatment plan. In existing radiation treatment systems, the radiation source that generates the radiation beam is configured to rotate within a plane that is substantially vertical (or perpendicular) to a longitudinal axis of the patient or the patient support. Varying the intensity and the entry angle of the incident radiation beam allows a radiation specialist to generate a radiation dose volume that corresponds to the size, shape, and location of the targeted object.